


Saved By the Brioche

by ephemeralblossom



Category: Emperor's New Groove (2000)
Genre: Baking, Dubious Lab Safety, Evil Plans, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-14
Updated: 2017-12-14
Packaged: 2019-02-14 16:22:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13011576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ephemeralblossom/pseuds/ephemeralblossom
Summary: In which Kronk becomes the legal inheritor of one Secret Lab, check, and all its various detritus, leftovers, lethal ingredients, and dust bunnies, double check.(Yzma isn't happy.)





	Saved By the Brioche

**Author's Note:**

  * For [plumeria47](https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumeria47/gifts).



“Think of it this way. Do you really think a kitten should be experimenting with deadly poisons in a Secret Lab, or trying to overthrow the monarchy and install herself as Supreme Dictator for Life?”

Well, if Kuzco put it that way, Kronk had to admit that the prospect was a bit dubious. Yzma hadn’t exactly been entirely stable even when she was just an evil mastermind. An evil mastermind with an enormous chip on her tiny feline shoulder seemed like it might push fate just a little too far. 

Kuzco clapped a friendly hand on Kronk’s shoulder. (Kronk sneaked a quick look to make sure the shoulder didn’t currently have any inhabitants. Shoulder Devil got stabby sometimes.) “Besides, you were her right-hand man! She’d want you to have it. Keep it in the, err, family.”

Kronk opened his mouth to say that whatever he and Yzma had been to each other, they’d never been family, but Kuzco was beginning to get that fixed green look, so he changed what he was going to say. “She never let me actually mix the potions. I just carried things.”

“That’s all going to change,” Kuzco said, immediately. “You’ll be Kronk, the Great Scientist. Well, Kronk the Okay Scientist, at least. There have to be some useful potions in Yzma’s logbooks - I’m sure they’re not _all_ animal transformations.”

Kronk was fairly sure of that as well. He was nearly a hundred percent certain that there were a large number of bottles in the storage cupboard with skulls and crossbones on them. Some of those potions weren’t animal transformations, they were stage-of-life transformations. As in, alive to dead. Or height transformations. Six feet tall to flat on your back. 

(He was only _nearly_ a hundred percent certain because he was occasionally absent-minded. It was just possible that Yzma had had a change of heart that one time he accidentally left a cake in the oven, and had poured out all the death bottles while he was rushing back to the kitchen to rescue it. Unlikely, Kronk thought. Very unlikely. But barely possible. He liked to give people the benefit of the doubt.)

“You could find some really useful stuff in there,” Kuzco was saying. He did tend to chatter a lot. Kronk was glad he was back in human shape, because a chattering llama would be more than a little disturbing. “Maybe there’s a cure for baldness.”

Kronk doubted this. 

“Aaaaanyway,” Kuzco said, “you’re a baker, right? So this is just another sort of baking! You’ll be great!”

And that was how Kronk ended up the legal inheritor of one Secret Lab, check, and all its various detritus, leftovers, lethal ingredients, and dust bunnies, double check. 

~

Yzma, predictably, was not pleased by this turn of events. 

“Just because I am not currently in human form,” she said wrathfully, perched on a high shelf and lashing her tail to and fro, “does not mean that Kuzco can confiscate what I rightfully own.”

“To be fair,” Kronk pointed out, being careful to stay out of range of her leap – he’d already found out what it was like to have an angry kitten jump onto his head claws out, and he didn’t want to repeat the experience – “you did steal most of this. So I’m not sure you rightfully own it.”

“Semantics,” Yzma said, loftily.

Kronk tried not to have a crisis of confidence over the fact that his ex-girlfriend had turned into a cat and she _still_ had a better vocabulary than he did. He had other strengths, though. Like the brioche dough in his fridge. He had high hopes for that brioche. He was taking it to Tipo’s birthday party tomorrow. 

“It’s my lab,” Yzma said. “Just because Kuzco says it’s yours doesn’t mean it _is_.”

Kronk saw one flaw in this line of reasoning. “He’s the Emperor. If he says it is –”

Yzma’s kitten face contorted into a scowl. It was remarkably cute. Kronk knew better than to try to pet her, however. People lost fingers that way. “If you hadn’t grabbed the wrong bottle, he’d be dead right now, and _I_ would be Empress!”

“Now, now,” Kronk said, sweeping some of the shards of smashed potion bottles into his dustpan. “We promised we wouldn’t beat each other up about the past.” 

“ _You_ promised that, Kronk,” Yzma said. “I never promised anything. Except my eternal wrath on Kuzco and that peasant and his family.”

“Leave Pacha and his family out of this,” Kronk protested, wagging a finger at her. He was more willing to stand up to Yzma now that she was a kitten, although he kept a wary eye on her whereabouts at all times. “Look, why don’t I go find you some milk?”

“I cannot be bribed with MILK,” Yzma shrieked, but she also looked hungry, so Kronk went to fetch some. Kuzco’s cook liked him, and was always willing to spare a bit of milk or tuna, as long as Yzma wasn’t perched on Kronk’s head like a vengeful god. 

Cleaning the lab went much more quickly once Yzma was curled up on her kitten bed in the corner, dreaming of milk and yarn and world domination. Kronk disposed of all the broken bottles, dusted the shelves, checked the safety specs on the coaster, oiled the levers, and took a few beetles he found behind a cupboard up to the open air. (He tried not to think about whether they were some of Yzma’s experiments. He didn’t have any ‘return to human’ potion, so the best he could do was to give them the best beetle life they could have.)

When he returned to the lab, Yzma was rummaging around at the back of a drawer. “Um,” Kronk said. “Are you sure Kuzco said it was all right for you to be my assistant? I mean, he did seem pretty sure that he wanted me to have the lab. And you did turn him into a llama.”

“Yes, Kronk, he’s fine with it,” Yzma said, with that steady unblinking glare that either meant she was lying her cute little whiskers off or she was just a cat with a cat glare. Kronk wasn’t sure which it was yet. He’d have to give the benefit of the doubt until he was. That was only fair. 

“And you’re not trying to turn him into a flea, or a llama, or a whale…”

“I’m not trying to turn him into _anything_ ,” Yzma said. “Except dead. Does dead work for you?”

Kronk considered this. Shoulder Angel said, “He just gave you a lab. Killing him isn’t being very grateful.”

Shoulder Devil countered, “He gave you _Yzma’s_ lab. That’s stealing. Stealing’s a crime.”

“Is it stealing if you’re the Emperor? Also, Yzma tried to kill him.”

“He has a point,” Shoulder Devil admitted. “But so do I.”

“Yeah?” Shoulder Angel crossed his arms and raised a skeptical eyebrow.

Shoulder Devil gestured towards Yzma, who was looking about as ferocious as a small kitten could. “She’s a lot scarier than Kuzco.”

Kronk had to admit that this was a compelling argument. 

“Kronk! Pay attention to me,” Yzma said. “You and I are going to make a new potion, and you are going to serve it to Kronk, and then the Empire will be mine!”

Kronk looked at her paws. “I’m not sure you can open the bottles or mix the potion –”

“I am going to supervise,” Yzma hissed. 

That made sense. Kronk was good at mixing things. Yzma was good at being terrifying and plotting to kill Kuzco. Together they’d make an unbeatable team. 

As they went back to Kronk’s house that evening, Yzma riding in the crook of Kronk’s arm and for once refraining from digging her claws in, Kronk mulled it over. Between the two of them, they could make it work. The secret hidden stash of poison that Yzma had helped him find could be easily mixed with an anti-llama potion, just in case Kuzco had some protection against human poison left over from when he was a llama. Yzma was all about checking every box this time, no accidents like the accidental llama transformation allowed. And Kronk could easily incorporate it into a delicious meal and serve it to Kuzco on a golden platter. (A literal golden platter. Kuzco was going even more ostentatious these days.)

“Don’t forget, Kronk,” Yzma said, when he let her out into the back garden that night so she could go chase coati. (Ordinary cats chased mice, or the odd lizard. Yzma considered that beneath her. The local coati population lived in fear of the warrior kitten suddenly unleashed among them.) “First thing tomorrow morning. We take over the kingdom!”

“Here we go again,” Kronk told Shoulder Angel and Shoulder Devil, when Yzma had raced out of sight (and more importantly, out of hearing). “I’m not sure this is a good idea.”

“Your life would be boring without her,” Shoulder Devil said, shrugging.

“But less dangerous,” Shoulder Angel pointed out. 

“He’s poking around in an Evil Lab without proper training or safety precautions. I think he’s got ‘danger’ covered all on his own.”

Put like that, Shoulder Devil had a point.

Still… “If I help Yzma kill Kuzco and become Empress, do you think she’ll let me keep the troop?”

“Uh,” Shoulder Angel and Shoulder Devil said together. 

Now that Kronk thought about it, Yzma didn’t seem to enjoy being a scout. Did he really want to go back to just being a henchman again? He was a very good troop leader. All of his scouts (except Yzma) said so. Henchman seemed a step back in his career development.

He was still deciding what to do when he went to make a midnight snack and found his brioche dough, still innocently resting in his fridge in preparation for Tipo’s birthday party. 

That settled it. He couldn’t let Tipo down, not on his _birthday_. Tipo was counting on him for brioche, friendship, and not-backsliding-into-evil. However much taking over the world might seem like an alluring prospect when it was shining out of Yzma’s maniacally-menacing kitten eyes, Kronk had moved on. 

“Yzma, you’ll just have to get yourself another henchman,” he said, trying it out to see how it sounded.

“That’s the spirit,” Shoulder Angel said approvingly.

“He’s gonna get turned into a beetle,” Shoulder Devil said, crossing his arms.

Kronk wasn’t going to get turned into a beetle. He was far too smart to drink anything Yzma handed him (or, uh, pawed him). 

On the other hand, perhaps it would be smartest to go see Kuzco and tell him about Yzma’s new plot _before_ defying Yzma. That way he’d have backup. Yzma might be the world’s greatest criminal kitten mastermind, but even she would struggle to defeat twenty of Kuzco’s warriors before breakfast. (It was the most important meal of the day, after all.)

And if he went to see Kuzco tomorrow morning, Kronk could take some brioche to thank him for the gift of the Secret Lab. It was a bit of a fixer-upper in progress, of course – and came with an evil former owner skulking around the place – but free real estate was free real estate. Kronk believed in proper thank-you etiquette. 

With a final fond glance at his brioche dough, Kronk turned off his kitchen lights and went to bed.


End file.
